This past winter, with the exception of the absence of a January thaw, was a typical winter of the first 25 years of my life. I am two months from being 80. Heavy snowfall in November. More in December. Melting snow and ice was always a feature on Easter Sunday in April before another snowfall would show up a week or so later. One of my college degrees was in Geography. Climate was a required...
Read More >>This past Twin City area winter was a winter of my childhood through teen age years. Cold and long. Normally a true "test winter', that is a killer winter in at its worst in our area occurs similar to this past cold and windy winter.....but without snow cover. We had snow cover this past season and it came before the bitter cold and winds. That which was covered was protected and therefore survived quite well....
Read More >>It snowed here last Thursday evening. We had only 8" here in my territory, two-thirds of an acre just west of Hopkins, Minnesota. By sunset yesterday, if the sun had been seen while setting in the rain, there was still some unmelted snow in the woodsier part of my grounds. Looking down from my office window as I write this note, I still see a portion of last December's snowdfall on the north side of...
Read More >>I have long rooted for global warming....well, not so much global warming as Minnesota warming.....up to a point, of course. That point would occur when the Earth around where I live enters Horticultural zone five.....No warmer, and certainly no cooler. Why would I want to slip back into the dark ages of landscaping in Horticultural zone 3.5 or 4.0? I'll never see the day, but I have craved to be able to landscape in a...
Read More >>.....if one, especially the homeowner, has prepared for it. I cannot remember a winter more visually more beautiful than our present sample of snow and cold. It's been colder, much colder in the past. It has snowed, and snowed heavier in the past....but a winter such as ours here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota this season, cannot be beat for its beauty. I wonder how many of our fellow Twin Citians have recognized what...
Read More >>Unfortunately for the broader community, our Minnesota landscape industry does not view 'landscaping' as an art form. At university it is not taught as an art form. The ladies of the garden clubs love flowers. They do not consider the home grounds as a canvas for landscape garden beauty. Husbands are allowed to mow the lawn. Cities often demand trees be planted along the roadways whether needed or not and without regard for beauty. My...
Read More >>We should have shared this Onslaught of Winter article with readers a few weeks ago. However, the nature of this particular Twin City late autumn has been keeping our company busy until the real snow arrives. Each autumn in our area is unique in its appearance and character. No one seems to record each year's peculiarities and we usually remember only the extremes....especially the thirty inches one Halloween in the 1990s and a repeat the...
Read More >>We receive notices from city 'officials' in a monthly bulletin. City officials are politicians and want people to re-elect them. Here in Minnetonka where I live city officials are officials for life..... In our horticulture world they rail against wild mustard and buckthorn nearly every month during the growing season. A few years ago purple loosestrife was on the city officials hate list. Now that European insects which suck the life out of purple loosestrife...
Read More >>October 10th is the average date in Minnesota's Twin Cities and environs of winter's first frost. My landscape gardening experience reminds me that over the past 25 years this first frost date has been delayed to around October 14th. Thank God! Landscape Gardening is supposed to be an art form. One would never know that 'supposed to be' by looking at our Twin Cities' practice of the art. In our modern day one has to...
Read More >>Panic in autumn regarding Minnesota conifers is a condition of the human Minnesotan who notices yellowing of foliage among conifers and begins to worry about it. These Minnesota's conifers don't panic for they are doing their normal conifer thing....ridding themselves of yesteryears' leaves, foliage, needles, whichever you wish to call their stuff turning brown in the autumn....usually the leaves older than three to five years. Usually only the garden-aware Minnesotans pay attention to such environmental...
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